


Monster

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Based on Monster MV, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7208339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The feelings of torture never undo, and one never forgets pain, especially when there was no lesson to be learned. Daesung hadn't been born in that facility, had smelt the humans' fear of him long before his capture. After his escape, he had tried so hard to keep his nature hidden, to lead a human existence. But Seungri - his lovely dongsaeng, his precious young one - had found the branding of the facility's serial number on his chest and it was hell from there. </p>
<p>(Cross-posted from AFF)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Facility 78

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Monster MV, specifically the animalistic appearance of Daesung. Daesung-centric. I am far from talented enough to make any of the gifs I am using, created by blake4monthsss from DeviantArt. These are the links to the gifs. 
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-74-306024686
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-15-305984568
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-4-305982963
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-21-305988624
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-18-305988152
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-29-305990293
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-120-306677196
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-35-305991102
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-100-306059525
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-98-306058927
> 
> http://blake4monthsss.deviantart.com/art/BIGBANG-Monster-GIF-87-306053621

"It's a matter of choice."

He wondered at those words, staring at a collapsing ceiling, not so much an illusion of decay as one of escape.

What did they mean by that? Where was his choice? In existence, perhaps. Was it supposed to be his choice to continue to exist, because that might be true. He did continue to exist, largely by his own will. Sometimes he died on the operating table and they would revive him, but should he set his mind to it, he would have no trouble claiming his own life. It wouldn't be hard. His war lines could come and go at his will (not that he told them that) and their power would easily be enough to spill his own blood and end the torment that was his life. That, he supposed, was a choice. 

"You choose to be this way."

What way? So far as he knew, he was quite benevolent. Didn't kill for sport, didn't threaten any race to extinction, never caged anything, make it to suffer more than need be. His appearance, then? True, one form looked more human than some of his others, but he would think that would be something these scientists and researchers should like to use to understand him. But then, he had never known their agendas and was far from grasping the subtleties of their machinations. He didn't want to know what they had him for. 

"This is your own fault."

For falling into a human trap, he supposed it was. He was stupid in following the too-perfect tracks, for trying to take an easy kill and had wound up here. He did not think that such a rookie mistake deserved this, though. Nothing deserved something like this. 

* * *

They had set him in a maze, told him to wander it and find something. What was unknown, but he had no shock collar and no time limit so perhaps they were simply looking to exercise him. After all, he had not been born here and he was far from docile. Pliant, maybe, but restless as only a wild, caged animal can be. 

He knew they were watching him - beady mechanical eyes, through a colourless lens, were steady on him and he could hear the  _click_ ,  _buzz, humm_  of its motors straining to catch all of him. They wanted to know how he worked, what he thought, why he moved as he did through the interpretation of his body alone and should they have asked, he might have answered their questions. 

He thought quite deeply, felt just as sincerely. As he wandered, he pondered the choices and changes that lead him here, wondered if Goddess had some plan for him by getting him trapped here. Was there something worth all of this? Was there something worth the strain and torment of an endless cycled life of needles, surgeons and sawblades? He felt that there was. He had always been favoured by Goddess, but She had no favourite that could not pass her test of pain and he was nothing if not a champion. 

Their little maze had mirrors, something he had always been fond of. There were many chances for him to reflect on his mental self, but so little opportunity to look at his physicality. How could one come to terms with all of themselves if the essence of their body is kept from them?

He never directly looked at the mirrors, lest the researchers think they know something they don't, but he observed himself with his senses, tendrils reaching out to caress the frigid, glass surface and come to terms with himself. 

His hair and fur were cream, shades away from white, his eyes the golden haze of burning sulfur rimmed in brimstone black and his skin a heaven-polished bronze. He was well aware of the leather braces along his torso, strapped to him in order to monitor movement, vitals and trace his movement. He could tear them off, but then they would be replaced, tighter than before, and these ones fit the most comfortably. They had also recently added braces to his furred arm under the pretense of seeing if the vitals match - though both parties know that's bullshit - and truthfully trying to stop him from using whatever ability is hidden within the impenetrable hide. They could not get under the fur, could not slice that apart, and he knew that drove them more crazy than anything. 

Lost in the concrete nightmare of the maze, he wondered if there would ever be a time he would know air free to breathe and not full of the noxious poisons they were trying to kill him with today. 


	2. Asylum

He would never say there were kind researchers, but there were pitying ones. 

One such person was a nurse, Hwayoung, who was in charge of sewing him back together once they were done with him. She was ruthless in her job, ignoring any sounds of pain he bothered to muster, but there was his pitying fondness in her eyes that told him she saw him as a wounded animal, reduced over and over again to a victim as soon as he was able to stand on his own once more. They both knew that the flesh she was sewing back together now would knit back together in a matter of days and he would be peerless smooth skin, unrecognizable as the thinly-sliced mess he was now, barely attached to his own bones. 

Hwayoung would care for him in the followup days, bringing him food, water, showers and sometimes small talk. She was the only one who seemed to care that he could talk. 

They never spoke about the treatments, what was happening in the facility around them nor the far more agonized screeches audible from far deeper in the complex - a place known as the "Human Ward". He didn't know what the Human Ward was, nor how to get there. Even exposed himself to many methods of suffering, the cries of those lost souls were far worse and he didn't want to know what kind of things were happening there. 

Hwayoung had gotten married recently. Her new husband was a well-off middle class man, nothing too fancy. She said he was kind and gentle with her, didn't ask about her job, as per the marriage contract, and loved her. She said she was looking at start a proper family, down in Seoul, with her husband and that she didn't care how many children she would up having, so long as just one of them was a boy. And there was one last thing she said, and something he listened to over and over again in his mind.

"I want to raise children who never have to understand this."

* * *

Daesung had never been shy about taking off his clothes, this Seungri knew, so he couldn't get why Daesung was so skittish of doing it for the Alive album. Yongbae, as usual, as willing to take off whatever clothes and even Jiyong had ditched sleeves. (Seunghyun's outfits seemed to have absorbed that extra fabric, but that was another thing.)

"What, is they bleach all getting to your blonde head?" Seungri jabbed playfully, smiling at him. The other singer smiled back, apparently having pulled out of whatever thoughts were cycling through his mind. 

"Maybe a little." Daesung smirked back and shook his head, hair falling into his eyes and the makeup on his eyes flashing golden for a quick second. Sparkles, probably. "I'm just tired - zoning out a lot lately."

"I can see that. Need some caffeine?"

"Nah. Won't help. Just sleep and a hot shower." 

"You sure? Works wonders for Jiyong."

Daesung chuckled. "I'm not a superhuman night owl like he is. I can't run on coffee and willpower."

Seungri scoffed. "Yah! You just don't know how to live life!"

"Maybe I don't." The elder shrugged. "Regardless, where are we off to this morning?"

"Some talk show. It'll probably be mostly about Yongbae's abs again, since he got so much screentime in  _Fantastic Baby_  shirtless."

"Jealous?"

"Why would I be jealous? It's just abs!"

"Abs equal fangirls, something you sorely lack."

"Just rub it in them. No, please, I like a lot of salt to go with my wounds."

"Come off it. You know as well as I do that when you finally get the balls to go up to YG with the solo stuff you've been hoarding, you'll get a release in no time. He let you do  _Strong Baby_ , remember?"

"Yeah, and remember how Jiyong featured in the recording and music video of that song? It's not that I don't appreciate having my hyungs around, but I don't need to be babysat either."

"Well, when you say it so maturely, I can't do anything but believe you."

Seungri rolled his eyes and pushed the elder's chest. "I specifically asked for no sarcasm when I ordered this hyung."

A shiver raced up through Daesung's back and settled behind his eyes. "If you keep having problems, maybe I could suggest another chain?"

"You're just saying that to be nice."

"Maybe. C'mon. Finish your makeup so we can go to this show without Yongbae yelling at us for tardiness."

"Why? Seunghyun-hyung's gonna be late anyway. He's never on time."

"Let's learn from his bad example, then, and do the  _opposite_  of it."

"God, you are so  _boring_. Do you ever not just follow the rules?"

Daesung regarded him with a raised eyebrow and Seungri huffed, finishing the wing of his eyeliner before tossing it back in Jiyong's drawer and leading the way down to the van that would take them to the interview.


	3. Opportunity

When chance grants wishes, one can either let them pass by or run with them. 

Hwayoung had been gone for nearly two years - safe in Seoul with her new family and gone from Facility 78 completely - when the first raids started. Waves and waves of communist freedom fighters storming against the complex. He was happy that Hwayoung wasn't there to get caught in the crossfire, especially when he smelt the blood of researchers or nurses that he had gotten familiar with (meaning been the subject of). There were blood splatters all across his maze when they finally released him from his confinement and back out into the testing arena. 

He would take long moments to stare at the blood, day by day turning black and fading away. The concrete was falling off the walls, the rebar inside rusting with exposure. The braces across his chest were scratched and feathery. 

It was all decay, all of it.

Including him.

The communist fighters were pushed back and rebuked, the scientists whispering of  _Americans_  when operating on him. They would not get close again, they had been assured - the fighters will not reutrn. You will not have to fight. You will not have to die, you should not die. You will be kept safe and secure. Continue as scheduled and produce your results. There will be no further interruptions.

That night, the screaming of the Human Ward resumed. 

* * *

Seungri smelled like thousands of perfumes and looked like glitter when he came home. Who knows what strip club he'd been burning money at, where he'd been and with whom. Not to mention the unmistakeable scent of sex that clung to his clothes and his skin. 

Daesung wasn't fond of the smell. 

"Did a stripper puke on you?" Seunghyun teased, chuckling. "Or did she get a friend to help?"

"Two friends." Seungri snarked back.

"Take a shower! You're gross!" Jiyong called from three rooms away and through a closed door.

"How would you know?!" Seungri yelled back.

"It's not like you don't smell like this every night!"

Seungri caught Daesung staring and winked, blowing a kiss. "Don't worry, hyung. I've got no problem setting you up with a girl."

Daesung didn't answer, simply watched with a neutral expression as Seungri went into the back rooms to shower, Seunghyun decided it was getting late and he wanted to go home. Yongbae was cutting up vegetables to take with him for lunch tomorrow at their dance practise/recording session.

Daesung silently got himself ready for bed, leaving the light on low so Seungri could see where he was going when he came into their shared room but dark enough to sleep. He wasn't asleep when Seungri came in, freshly clean and free of the stench of depravity. He wasn't asleep when Seungri changed into nightclothes and got into their shared queen bed, sprawling out as he normally did, ankle touching his bare shin. 

Heat flared in his eyes and reached like a spilling lake to the beginning of his neck, where it met his skull and pooled. 

Touching Seungri was always agonizing.

Daesung didn't sleep.


	4. Exchange

BNF7 0354.

That was his number. 

It was branded into him sometime after he had first arrived, still wild and reckless. He was not intimidated by anything, even less by pain. He had flexed and snapped the long rod of the brand, staring down his human captor. That was before he had become pliant, learned that all pain was bearable, but he had no reason to make it worse for himself than the state of the facility, even then, suggested. 

He didn't know if there was rhyme or reason to his number, didn't know what purpose it served in filing him when he was the only living thing in his block. Thousands of cells with no one in them except ghosts of lost souls, condemned to linger in the place of their likely grisly deaths. In fairness, he didn't think about it much, if at all. It came to him when he caught sight of the flurescent lettering in one of the many maze mirrors or when it tingled slightly, telling him that they were tracking him, recording his route and motions. For him, it was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, if that. He wasn't affected by it. 

It burned for a long time two months after the initial communist attacks. He was locked in his cell, distanced from the sounds of gunfire, screaming and the thick scent of blood and feces. He didnt know who it was from - who was killed and who was going to have to clean any of that up. His door wasn't open and he hadn't tried to open it, sitting in a corner of his room with his knees pulled up to his chest, head bowed. He was not looking forward to whatever punishment would await him if they decided he had tried to use the distraction to leave. 

"Who are you?"

He looked up, the thick country dialect distanced like a memory of words echoed through time. There was a man with a dirty rifle standing there, looking at him. He looked worn out and tired, like he'd been up through the night running. 

"What do you mean?"

"This is a high-security prison. Who are you and what did you do?"

He looked up to the cracked ceiling, dripping down stagnant liquid that smelt so putrid that it still affected him even after all of the years he spent with it. "I don't know what I did to them. I was taken and trapped here."

"Who are you, then?"

"I don't know."

Closer gunfire made the man look down the hall, beyond his scope of vision, then raise his rifle. He shot through the lock mechanism of the door and it creaked open the slightest bit. "Have your choice then, convict. I suggest you run if you can."

He watched the strange man go and sat still for many long minutes, staring at the crack in the door. Would it matter if he went? After all, they could easily find him again, track the code on his skin and follow him again. Would it be worth whatever precious time he spent free again? 

He supposed that all time spent out of prison was valuable time - true time - when he could rot away in insipid solidarity with these crumbling walls and vast mazes of nothingness but reflections revealing less and less appealing truths. 

He stood, broad shoulders hunched together in a semblance of human meekness. He pushed the door open, gently, and peered around the corners, looking for anyone who would come for him. Sirens on the walls had been dismantled or destroyed and there was some stray concrete chunks lying about from stray gunshots. Perhaps his escape would be more effective than he thought. There was no sign of that man any longer and he found no reason to wait to find out. 

He pressed against the wall, number still alight on his chest, and steadied his heartbeat with the cool rubble to his back. 

* * *

Seungri watched Daesung walk about, blonde hair drooping down onto his face and a lingering look of darkness eminating from him. 

"Don't you see anything wrong with him?"

Jiyong peered over at their secondary singer. "Not really. He's probably just tired. He's not irritable, right?"

"No, he's just . . . withdrawn. Like he wants to run away."

Yongbae clapped him on the back, offering a kindly smile. "Don't we all? Look, if he's really bothering you so much - with his actions - then why don't you go and ask him about it? See if there's something any of us could do to make it better for him?"

Seungri nodded, but he was unsure. Daesung didn't look like he wanted him around, like he wanted to see anyone. He was pacing before concerts like an animal and it didn't help settle Seungri's mind to have his hyung so nervous when he was in a safe venue surrounded by his friends and a wall of security people. 

He walked down to Daesung's secluded changing room - another odd feature that had cropped up recently that he'd never done before this new bout of frustration. 

"Daesung?"

The older man dropped down onto his haunches, arms covering his chest determinedly. "You're supposed to knock first!"

"Oh, come off it. You're not Seunghyun. Stop being so distant." Seungri sat himself down in a chair opposite his hyung and it only seemed to make the elder angrier. "What's wrong with you? You've been really off lately."

"Am I not allowed to be different?"

"You are, but I mean you're not acting like Daesung." Seungri sat forward and the elder man shrunk away. "See what I mean? You and me are close, but you're being strange on me and I don't know what to do. Am I doing something?"

Guilt worked its way up Daesung's throat, but he couldn't let the other know he was feelign remorse. If he did that, then Seungri would start asking deeper questions and an unwanted truth - revealing itself to him in the mirror two weeks ago - would come out. Unfortunately, that left Daesung with only one option - be unbearably nasty to Seungri and get him to hurt enough to leave. It wasn't ideal, but that was the only way to deal with the younger man more permanently. "I need to be left alone, for starters. It wouold be nice to have some privacy for once."

Seungri's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "Wow. Okay." He stood, offended. "I'm trying to be a good dongsaeng and make sure you're healthy, but if you want to be an asshole, don't let me stop you."

Daesung winced when the door slammed shut, but was able to stand again. He looked back to his mirror. BNF7 0354.

"Fuck me."

He spun around once more, finding Seungri standing once more in his doorway. He was too late now. His dongsaeng had seen. His heart wrenched in despair. 

"Seunghyun, what have you done?"


	5. Action

The breath rushed from him and he pressed off the wall, taking off down the hall. 

In a perverse sense, it felt rejuvinating to be running. So many days he'd spent stalking down new cracks and drips, skulking around the maze and creeping through the murk of lonely insanity through reflection. So long, it felt like, he'd been trapped in his own skin, hiding as much of himself as possible to keep whatever agenda the researchers had at bay. He would not succumb, Goddess willed or not. 

Now, he didn't know if this was Her way of giving him a second chance, telling him his torture was at an end and that he was free now or whether this was some new test. Certianly, this was of no design of the scientists', because as he ran, their blood smeared the walls and many nurses he'd seen or been subject to were scattered around, bullets still stuck in the walls. With each new twist of the narrow corridors, his skin got tighter and tighter, like his inner beast was waiting for something that wasn't revealed quite yet and it  _burned_  inside of him, much stronger than the wispish fancy of the code on his chest. 

Body upon body, blood in blood. When death came, no family name or noble breeding would save them punishment. It hadn't saved him and Nature herself was not one to play favourites - all of her children suffered, in one fashion or another, and she was not so lofty as to exclude any one of them. Predator ot not, he, too, had been at the mercy of her whim. Goddess would not save him, only reward, and he had done nothing yet so far as to please her. 

The blood, feces and organs made his boots slippery and his progress slower than he wanted. He needed to move faster, faster,  _faster_  but he could not. 

What weakness had come upon him in his decades spent here? Even as young as he had been at the age of capture, he was sufficent to run through the traces of others' finished meals, organs and bones left to decay to earth. He had been no stranger to speeding along through dimly lit forest paths fast enough to make the scenery blur and his senses come alive. He well remembered the feeling of his eyes shifting and the world lighting up a syrupy red, mammals lighting up an inviting burning phosphorus and plants humming along at their own mellow orange. He knew the feeling of his body cutting through the air sharply enough to push the hair off his face, to reach his skin through his fur. Had he become such a docile being that those once-pleasures taken for granted escaped his abilities now? Should he have been practising them, even if that would allow the researchers to learn far more about him than he was comfortable with? 

He rounded another corner and reached for the beast he knew was there, trying to reconnect with a piece of himself that he shouldn't have ever had to leave behind. 

* * *

Seungri was panicking and he knew Daesung  _knew_. 

" _Please_  tell me that's a really terribly chosen tattoo that you got last week and were too embarrassed to show me.  _Please._ "

"Close the door."

Against his better judgement, Seungri listened, eyes locked on his hyung. "I was right, wasn't I? You want to be just like Jiyong, with all of his weird number tattoos."

Daesung sighed. "If you're trying to play around this for my sake, don't bother."

"I don't think you quite understand, Dae." Seungri fel the hysteria climbing in the back of his mind and his hands were starting to shake. "I've seen documentaries about the demon facilities - had several shown to me in school. They declassified the facilities' doings some time ago, long after all the experiements were killed and there weren't supposed to be any of them left. We were supposed to be safe from the demons."

"You think I don't know that?" Daesung met his gaze and there was something sharp there. "I went to school. I've been through all human custom and I've lived by it since I got out of that wretched place. You think I don't know about what happened there? You think I don't know about their demon experiments? Seunghyun, I  _was one_."

The shaking got worse and travelled into his legs. "Th-Then what the fuck kind of mistake did you make coming here? Do you have any idea about the kind of danger you bring with you?"

Daesung rolled his shoulders. "I haven't ever killed a human being. Not once."

Seungri wanted to scream, but lowered his voice instead because he was pretty sure he heard Seunghyun roving around outside. "Maybe, maybe not. But I'm talking about from the  _government_. Do you have any idea what they'd do if they found you? What they'll do to  _us_  and YG and all of the other artists that work there?"

This time Daesung snarled, hackles raised and eyes flashing white for a brief moment. " _Yes_ , I am aware."

"And you came anyway."

"Should I have gone back to the wild? Should I have gone back to where I belong and get exterminated? I didn't survive eighty-seven years worth of increasingly medieval torture just to finally come home and get  _killed_. Are you going to blame me for going where I would be safest? Are you going to hate me for trying to survive and continue on away from harm?"

His shaking wasn't getting any better. "I don't think-"

"Thinking isn't good enough." Daesung's stance softened and he sighed heavily, running a hand over his face. "If someone offered me the chance to get anything I ever wanted and all I had to do was go back to that place, I wouldn't take it. I would run from them and never look back. It's hard for me to have sympathy for your situation when the fact that I am a thinking and living being didn't ever cross the minds of my torturers."

"So . . . What does that mean, then? Are you going to kill us all?"

Daesung peered out at him from underneath his blonde fringe. "Why would I do that? Why would I harm any of the people I love?"

"I hate to break this to you, but I'm not keeping your secret." Seungri steeled himself and faced down the, the  _monster_  in the room with him. "If you're going to do anything, now would be the time."

"I'm not killing anyone, Seunghyun." 

It's wasn't right to hear his hyung sound so defeated, so broken, but this man was a  _demon_. He was  _evil_  and there were no two ways about that. His race were exterminated for a reason and that he'd managed to slip past was just a fluke of the system. 

Daesung rubbed his chest and winced. 

"What's wrong?" The words slipped out automatically. 

"You should get back to the others. Tell them I got sick and went home. Tell them not to worry and that I'll see them next rehersal."

"Dae, what-"

Suddenly, Daesung was pressing him into the wall, chest to chest and lips a fraction of an inch apart. He took a shaky breath in, pressing his nose into Seungri's neck. "If you've ever loved me, leave now and keep this between us."

There was something in the thickness of Daesung's voice, the desperation tinged into the natural rasp that made Seungri freeze up, his throat clogging with some unknown sympathy. "Okay. Okay."

Daesung pulled back, eyes closed, and offered a small smile. "I'll see you soon."

Seungri blinked, taken aback by the shadow of agony in his words, and was left with only an empty room and the lingering impression of Daesung's cologne - airy, floral, and cloying like earth after rain.


	6. War

Death was not unfamiliar to him, but witnessing wanton destruction was. 

There was nothing from Nature that happened without reason - rain to feed, sunlight to grow, death to survive, storms to produce calm. But here, there was destruction of a kind that made no sense, death that produced nothing but foul memories and dissension. Black blood grew more and more crimson, the scent stronger and stronger as the sound of gunfire encroached. 

He halted, listening for violence headed his way, and part of the wall erupted and shot out at him. He reeled back, right arm reflexively raising to shield him from the shrapnel of the mortar shell. 

Confusion spread through him and he ducked away, running past the hole in the wall, with its distant promise of freedom, deeper into the complex. He picked up speed, almost slamming into another wall as he rounded a corner and came to a kind of warehouse area, scientists lying prone and bleeding on the concrete. One looked up to him, eyes pleading for mercy even as his throat bubbled fresh hell. He kept the man's eye until he finally died. 

Slowly, he peered around the corner once more and ducked back as bullets greeted him. He could hear the hasty orders from across the warehouse - "Shoot anything that moves!" - and decided that seeking any kind of assistance from any human was a waste of time and would only likely get him caught in the same situation he had just started to run from. Instead, he crouched down, letting his war lines seek up onto his skin, coming to encase him like painted flares of black ink, and flickered his vision, watching the vibrations of gunfire echo through the halls. He could see where the soldiers' voices were coming from. His vision flickered again and he saw them crouched behind a wooden crate full of towels. Their skeletons were blue-white, while their guns were blinding to look at. There was a gap and he knew they weren't listening. Channelling his will into his legs, he broke cover and dashed across the opening, right arm raised just incase they fired on him. 

Even once he was away from them, eyes clicking back to black and into the colour spectrum, he didn't stop running, pressing himself down whichever hallway sounded the least like the brutal ring of metal piercing flesh. 

* * *

"Where's Daesung?" Seunghyun asked. 

"Went home. Felt ill." Seungri replied, moving past them without meeting any of their gazes. 

"You don't look so good either." Yongbae commented, coming over to feel his forehead. The maknae flinched away from him, backing up and dodging more touching. 

"I'm fine, but I'm leaving as soon as we're done here."

Jiyong was staring at him, but nodded. Seungri felet bad for settling more worry on his leader's shoulders. He didn't mean to, but what else was there? Daesung wasn't  _human_  - he was one of the demons, had been all this time! How does one deal witht hat kind of a breach of trust and walk away from it, come out unphased? And the way Daesung was speaking made it sound like he would never see them again, like he was expecting to leave and never come back. How he thought he would get away with that, Seungri didn't know, because everyone in Bigbang was known worldwide; even should he get a place to himself, there was nowhere he would be able to hide. 

So, when the lights came on and the cameras started rolling, Seungri plastered on his best smile and slid into his entertainer guise.

It was dark when he left, shrugging off concern from the other Bigbang members and Seunghyun's soft "I can't reach Daesung." He walked to his car and just drove home, unwilling and unable to focus on anything but making it to his front door, entering and collapsing on his couch. He wanted to watch the light of the city reflect on his ceiling as he considered now what he would do with his knowledge of Daesung. 

Could he even be called Daesung? He wasn't human, admitted to having been trapped over seventy years in his facility. What was his name? Did he have one before he came to human society, integrated into this mess? What did he truly look like, without whatever human guise he had taken to him? What did he look like past all the fear and the horror? Who was he past it all, was he vicious like the textbooks and documentaries had claimed? 

What did it mean to call him a demon?

Seungri didn't know. He didn't understand how it had been him to get trapped in this mess. Why not Jiyong or Yongbae, people who could make sense of this and hold it together, know what to do and say? Even Seunghyun, who loved Daesung perhaps more than a brother should?

But then again, it kept coming down to one question and one alone - what was Daesung to him? What was his life worth, and how much did he value the time that they'd spent together? Daesung would have no reason to hide his true personality, let alone send Seungri away and try to shoulder the burden of getting hunted away from people who would likely be killed as accomplices should they be caught together. If he had any ill intention, he would not have this care, would not seek to put up this barrier. 

Seungri felt like he was missing something, but didn't know what it was.


	7. The Human Ward

He halted somewhere deep in the facility, the floor too slippery with gore and blood for him to keep completely stable footing. What had once been scientist corpses were now ex-scientist piles of flesh and twisted bone. At the very least, he assumed it was scientists and researchers. 

As he progressed, the once-dim lighting became smokey blue florescent tubes on black walls. Gurneys lined the sides of the walls, some empty, some bloody and some with still, human bodies strapped down with leather at the wrists, ankles and neck. Males and females alike were there, both shaven bald and sunken in, as if they were skeletons with a human visage pulled over them.

He dared not speak. As soon as he'd stepped inside, the noise of gunfire abruptly cut off. Whatever was to be housed here was dangerous, if nothing else, and he was not looking for a fight. He stealthed through the hallways, stalking through like a predator in unfamiliar territory. HIs eyes clicked from black to blue and the room appeared brighter, giving him enough of an advantage to not hit anything as he skulked around. There were no bullet holes here, the concrete not rotting away, no decay lingering but the unmistakable scent of death and the ominous forewarning of despair. It rightfully unsettled him.

"A demon."

He swung around, a shiver ripping up him at the void gaze levelled at him from the human shell standing behind him. It looked like it might have once been a woman, but even its voice was ambiguous. It sounded like it had been passed through gravel and sand, left to rot in unbearable heat and fire. 

"A demon."

He twisted around, finding another living corpse suspended from the ceiling by its arms. They had been dislocated for a long time, it appeared. The skin was transluscent and taut where it was still connected to the shoulder blade, but the ball at the end of the humerus was visible and fired white and dry. 

"A demon." 

Beside the hanging human where were two dried out arms, unmoving in the still air, the skin thin and transparent like old plastic lining not able to stop the passage of light through the gap between the radius and ulna in the forearms. The person they belonged to was on the floor, gazing up at him. Their eyes were brown, flickering back and forth over his body.

 _What is this_ _?_  

He backed away from them, approaching him with only dead acceptance. He backed into a large room, tanks and tables and tubes and machines lining the walls, tables covered in broken, bloody tools and think books scattered on them. Researchers looked up at him, making a kind of startled noise behind their protective and obscuring masks. 

"A demon!"

Monstrosities inside the tanks shifted in anger at the noises, one creature in a cage above him savagely trying to bite through the bars. Hairless and skinless, it snapped at the thick iron rods using its jaw bones. Its teeth lay, yellow, on the floor beneath it and its gums had been stripped away, either through force or by the gnawing. 

"How did you make it out of the testing chambers?" One of the scientists snapped - most likely the leader. 

He was frozen - behind him was gunfire and war, but in front of him was ruthless madness. Which way was better to go? Take a chance with getting himself killed or wade through this, this- He didn't know what this was. 

The lead scientist grabbed a pistol and shot at him, but he was quick to duck behind the shield of his fur, the bullets ricocheting into the tubes and cages, the ones he ducked hitting the shuffling skeletons behind him, who collapsed, unmoving, with a meek _whoosh_. 

"You want to run loose? Fine." The scientist snarled. "Welcome to the Human Ward, monster."

As if summoned, there was a shriek, deafening with his advanced senses.

* * *

Seungri couldn't do it. 

Daesung was out there right now, likely being tracked down by somebody, dragged to God-knows-where. He'd seen the documentaries of Facilities 46, 35 and 59, about the horrors that happened there and what would likely await Daesung now what they no longer had a use for him. 

But what was it even for? There had been no reports of any demon activity for decades, nearly since the facilities shut down, and when the government had gone on those raids, they had been very keen to tell the public so. If this was the government coming back, after over eighty years, to hunt down pre-marked demons, what was the real reason? Did they want to kill them, or were they looking to reignite the projects they'd declared finished enough to release to the public fifty something years ago? It didn't add up.

Seungri rolled out of bed, grabbing his phone and keys, pulling on some clothes and disappearing out the door. 


	8. Awaken

He ran from them, trying to dodge bullets as best he could. The scientists called out in panic and alarm, pulling out weapons they used against rogue subjects. He knew what this place was, understood now why the nurses called the place the Human Ward. 

There was a demon, much older and stronger than him, though of a different kind, that had been slaughtered, left cut open on an operating table. Vials, tubes and the heady smell of formaldehyde choking the room. Parts of his essence were put aside and labelled. In cages around them, there were humans, some whimpering in confused fear while others had their eyes rolled into the back of their heads, foaming at the mouth and slavering through the bars. The human experiments snapped and growled at him, trying to draw him closer to attack with their deformed hands and split nails, jagged and sharp. Some had gotten as far as developing some of the claws - unique to each demon breed - but had impaled themselves on them in a desperate lack of self-awareness, mutilating themselves because of their claustrophobic confinement. 

That was when he felt the bullets pierce his back.

He dropped to his knees, hands on his chest coming back white with his blood. 

The scientist grabbed his hair and yanked his head back. "See him? We killed him and it won't take us much to kill a yearling like you."

The black ink of his war lines crept around his body, but the scientist didn't care. There was a thick burning in his eyes. He gathered the power of the lines in the centre of his chest, letting the grey energy throw the scientists back into their creations. Some of the humans - untainted - screamed in terror and blindness. 

Thick grey fog took over the room, but his footsteps echoed loudly in it. He stopped in the doorway, breathing in deeply once, the mist dissipating quickly. 

White fur coated his back, his right hand sporting two long, black talons from his index and middle fingers. His war lines had strapped themselves in a netted pattern across his upper body. His hair, too, looked as if someone in agony had torn through it. 

The power he exuded made the mindless slaves halt their ravenous behaviour and shrink back.

"Try."

* * *

Daesung's apartment door was open and the place was empty of the things Daesung valued most. The keys were on the table by the door with a note to the landlady that he would not be coming back, next to a stack of money. 

"Fuck." Seungri breathed. He had thought he'd made it close, being able to catch Daesung at his apartment because the man's vehicle was still there. But, he supposed, the other man was a demon and who knew what the full scope of their abilities really were. "Damnit, Daesung! Where the fuck have you gone?!"

"You're looking for Daesung?"

He turned to a man in a black suit standing outside another apartment door. 

"Yeah, I am."

"I could take you to him."

Seungir looked him up and down. "Why would you?"

He shrugged. "He looked distressed. If you're a friend, maybe you can help him."

"Okay then. Lead on, stranger." 

He turned to look into Daesung's apartment one last time, felt a hard connection to the back of his head, then collapsed. 


	9. Savage

Evolution like this was natural, he knew. His instincts knew his new abilties better than he did and it would take some proper time to interact with them before he could call on them at will, so for now, he let his body handle itself. 

He had anticipated that he would kill everyone in the room, but found that his only real desire was to escape this forsaken place. He rumbled at them, his dominance and power reaching even their own subdued and repressed instincts, making them properly cower. 

He could flee now, his back covered from the hail of bullets and he wasn't interested in wasting time with what was left of the helpless creatures, letting the dead rot and the living to suffer. This was not his fight, his war, no matter what sympathies they evoked in him.

He ran, eyes alight in their natural gold. His body seemed to know the layout of the complex, working through the intricate hallways and navigating him up to a pathway that ran above his maze. It seemed to go on endlessly and for a moment, anger rushed through him. Human lifetimes he'd spent here, idling in the most profound of nothingness and it made his pride sting. But now was not the time for pride, which he had abandoned a long time ago. He took off running again, the endless caverns and casams of the facility looming beyond him. He was halted, though, by a creature rushing towards him. 

It was one of the wretches, a completed victim of the Human Ward it seemed, rushed towards him, claws and fangs barred. He barred his fangs in return, dodging around its mindless attack and slamming into it with his back, letting it claw at the cream fur. He pinned the monster against the wall, making sure to daze it, before spinning around and slashing out its throat with his new talons. It gargled, flailing out at him, but he cut off its hands, letting the thing slide down the wall. 

Another growl, from a proper one of his kind, echoed down the hall and he swung around to face the other. It was a weaker thing and he advanced on the coming demon. It was a short match, his instincts too strong inside his body for the other to override. He tore the other to pieces, letting its body fall to the floor. He rumbled thick and heavy, hearing the lesser beings scatter inside their mazes underneath him. 

The light of a window was not too distant from him and he took off, freedom his only objective. 

* * *

Seungri awoke in something that looked like a massive concrete maze, if it had been left to rot for a couple of centuries. There were rumbles and growls echoing down all around him and he skittered back into a wall, terrified to make any noise lest whatever in this prison with him come looking for him.

"Welcome, Mr. Lee."

Seungri's head snapped up to the ceiling, but there were no visible PA systems. His heart stilled in his chest and he sincerely wished he'd have just followed Daesung when he left, not just let him go out on his own. 

"I see you're finding your time here enjoyable." There was a bitter laugh and Seungri wanted to punch whoever was talking. "Welcome to Facility 78's BNF7 maze. I'm sure you've heard them, but there are various demons loosed in this maze with you and it is only a matter of time before they find you. It is unfortunate that someone such as yourself has been put in such an undesirable situation. Pity, then, that neither you nor I can find him, or he might be able to save you. My only advice for you, Mr. Lee, is to not stop running. Your scent is scattered through the maze now, but as the days wear on, it will wear away and they are very good hunters. Unfortunate for you that Daesung has left you here to die."

Seungri's heart was pounding in his chest and he desperately wanted to cry. He stood up on his shaking limbs, trying to sort through the urges of terror and panic to think clearly and logically enough to survive. They had to be after Daesung, there was nothing else to it. They wanted him or needed him for something and weren't able to find him, vanished onto the wind. If they thought Seungri was valuable enough bait to give him the chance of dying, then they had to know Daesung would come for him. 

He hoped. 


	10. Threat

Seungri climbed up onto the top of the decaying concrete barriers. It gave the monsters int he arena with him a better chance of finding him, but it also gave him the distinct advantage of also being able to see them. he didn't figure he could outrun them, so his best bet was to outsmart them. He wasn't given much to work with - the entire place was clumps of concrete, stone slabs and rebar holding the place together. Not exactly prime real estate, even for a monster murder dungeon.

_I really shouldn't be trying to make light of the situation._

It was hard not to, though. There was hysteria crouched in the back of his mind and any second, he was sure he was going to lose it and it would take over, definitely getting him killed. He didn't know what they wanted Daesung for, and he had no one to ask to find out, but it couldn't have been good. Sure, they were the lesser two members of Bigbang, but it wouldn't take very long before people came looking for them, wondering why the radio silence. He guessed, anyway. He'd gone weeks without checking up on Jiyong before when he'd been going through a bender and for all he'd known, Jiyong could have been dead. 

He hoped his bandmates would recognize that something was wrong. If they missed a show or performance, their phones would get blown up with messages and when they failed to return those calls, Jiyong and Yongbae would show up at their doors, all righteous fury, to find Daesung's apartment open and empty, Seungri's vacant as well. But even then, if their bandmates did look for them and realize something was wrong, Daesung had hidden his secret so well that there woudln't be anyone who would think to look at an old Facilty, especially ones that are supposed to be abandoned. 

Seungri ran past a skeleton and black flakes, scattering in some unfelt breeze. He didn't know how long it had been there was wasn't eager to find out. He would stay up on top of the walls and continue avoiding the monsters for as long as possible. . 

And then there was a thick growl from behind him and he didn't think before he was off running.

* * *

His heart was pounding, but the warning in his eyes was worse. They were stinging like they were dipped in acid and there was a trembling in his lower abdomen that bespoke thick fear. 

He knew he shouldn't have left Seungri behind. He'd hoped his dongsaeng could just keep his mouth shut, stay away from him until it was too late for anyone to track him down. But he'd felt it. Seungri couldn't take the idea of betrayal and had gone after him to try and find him, join him, whatever. Seungri just wanted to clear the air and keep him safe, but it turns out they were both incapable of that. 

His hair was pushed back in messy tangles and both eyes were visible, pulsing a painful gold and his claws were tingling. 

His boots stuck well in the wet earth and he propelled himself at top speed through the forest. He was a blur, moving so fast that even the deer didn't have a chance to startle before he was gone, vanished back between the trees. His war lines were flaring, wrapping around him too tightly and restless, wanting to lash out and wipe out everything in fornt of him.

He could feel Seungri, across the border in North Korea. He pushed himself into a sprint and jumped, easily launching over the DMZ and hitting the ground with a roll, dashing off before anyone could so much as register his prescence. His legs pumped harder.

He had to find Seungri. And the pulse in his chest told him that he had to get there soon.


	11. Mate

Seungri was running, but he knew it wasn't going to do him any good. Whatever this monster was, it was going to catch him before he even made it to the end of the wall. He could feel the thing's breath along his nape and its teeth had scraped him before he dropped back down into the maze proper and bought himself a precious few seconds. 

"You were easier prey than I imagined, Mr. Lee." The PA voice spoke again, another bitter laugh. "A pity. I was truly hoping that Daesung would be here to die with you, but I suppose I'll just have to send a team to scour for his body. I wonder what the tracker has to say abotu his location. Old technology like this is all well and good, but it can be finicky sometimes. I'm sure you understand, Mr. Lee."

Seungri wanted to yell back, to tell him to go fuck himself, but he needed that oxygen more for running than yelling at a man that couldn't hear him.

"Fancy that, Mr. Lee. The tracker says he's in the complex. I wonder if he managed to rub the tracker off onto you."

The demon behind him yowled and there was the grating sound of claw on concrete. Seungri rounded the corner, taking a moment to glance over his shoulder. 

The demon was on the ground, gripping a shoulder that looked mostly torn off. Massive spotlights lit up sections of the arena, one flashing over and highlighting Daesung's face, black mesh covering his top half and straps across his chest. His eyes were illuminating the other demon's face and barred his teeth, thick and and long canines flashing in the light. The demon growled back, heaving itself to its feet and lunging at him. Daesung caught it with his left hand and sliced off its head with two long black talons on his right hand. Its body fell and he tossed its head aside, turning to look at Seungri, who was huddled behind the corner. 

"What a pleasant surprise." The PA voice said. "The machine wasn't wrong after all."

The gold in his eyes bloomed again, the snarl he released purely animal. Some of the black netting of his mesh released, reaching out from him like tentacles. Concrete within two feet of the blackness started to disappear, the radius of the power building and stretching outwards. 

The PA voice was less sarcastically enthusiastic this time, some kind of passive-aggressive anger seeping in. "Your files are imcomplete. They don't mention this."

Seungri wanted to skitter back from the approaching destruction, but the sound that Daesung made stopped him, the field expanding past him and leaving him unharmed. He couldn't stop himself from shaking, hard, but crawling closer to Daesung eased some of his fear as slowly but surely, all the cover around them vanished. 

"The ante will have to be upped, it seems." The PA voice muttered, embittered, before the distant sounds of opening cages and several dozen genderless, translucent skeletons jumped up from holes in the ground or issued from the walls. 

Daesung reached down, cupping Seungri's shoulder with his taloned hand. This time he roared, the field halting for a brief moment before exploding out, incinerating everything and leaving nothing. There was a thick swell of power and Seungri felt it, getting more and more lightheaded as it rose, clinging to Daesung's leg to keep him grounded and even slicing his hand on the talons to keep himself aware. It was a failing endeavour.

* * *

_" . . . massive explosion in an old Facility on the north side of the DMZ. No one knows what happened, only that there is nothing that remains of the facility outside of its foundation. Tensions have been heating up between the two countries because of it."_

Seungri blinked awake, finding his hand tucked into Daesung's, who was sleeping slumped over a hosptial bed. 

"Daesung?"

The man snapped up, clad in black jeans and a black t-shirt, obviously exhausted and worn out. "Seunghyun, you're awake. Thank God."

"What happened? Is Facility 78 actually gone?"

Daesung's face fell eerily still. "Yes. Everything is gone there."

"What does that mean? For you?"

Daesung cocked his head and his blonde hair fell out of his eyes, which flashed that stunning gold once more. "Without the machine that scribed the code onto my skin, the tracker can't be activated or followed."

"Who was it, Dae? Who was after you?"

"Seunghyun, none of it is important anymore. They're all dead. I've made sure of it this time. No one will hurt either of us again."

* * *

He wondered, after it was all said and done, whether Seungri was the reward Goddess had chosen for him. He had endured torture and confinement with unspeakable horror; walked through blood, gore and evil to arrive at the place he was in now. The affection and care of Seungri wasn't enough to erase it, even come to terms with it, but he was sure that the younger man would come to love him, in time, as the bond built its way over to him and settled in the base of his skull the same way it did him. 

He'd waited this long. A few more years wouldn't weigh so heavily on him now.


	12. Epilogue: Return

It took Seungri time to get used to the idea that the same gravel-voiced, gentle-handed man he'd grown up next to was the same demon that obliterated a facility in North Korea in a matter of moments. Daesung was gracious about his adjustment, not asking him questions or hovering over him. Six months, abouts, it took him, but after that was over, he was quick to fall in bed with Daesung.

Daesung had told him the first time they had sex that this was the consummation of some kind of bond between them. Seungri didn't care. He had felt pulled to Daesung more and more these days, wanting the demon in the most sexual sense of the words. In private (ei. Seungri's apartment), Daesung let himself loose, lounging around and just existing in demon form on Seungri's couch. Since he started to let his demon characterists out from behind his human shell, Seungrii had been irrepairably drawn to the other man, melting into him if their hands so much as brushed in a hallway. More than once, his knees had given way when they so much as hugged. So, he didn't really care about this bond, mate thing, because it was already affecting him and he was more than ready to keep Daesung, if need be.

"Do you ever plan on telling Bigbang?"

Daesung's head snapped up. "No. I didn't. Why do you ask?"

"Isn't this the kind of thing we should be open about?"

"Do you remember your reaction to me? And you're my mate - my own thoughts and acceptance of my position were transferred to you even then, keeping you calmer than you would have been and you were more than a little panicked even beyond that."

"Well, I mean, I could tell them if you'd rather?"

"I don't want anyone to know." Daesung replied, eyes narrowing. "Not if I can help it."

"Dae~, c'mon. This is important."

"If you want me to tell Bigbang that I'm a demon, you have to come out as gay to the media."

Seungri went still. "That's pretty big."

Daesung nodded. "I know. Only my secret will get me killed if I tell the wrong people."

"It can't be that bad. We've grown up with these men."

Daesung sighed. "You want them to know so badly? Bring them in, then."

Seungri jumped. "Really?"

"Go ahead."

Seungri did as he was bade, bringing the other three members into the room where Daesung was sitting, eyes closed and head tilted down. 

"Ri said you had something to tell us?" Jiyong prompted when he sat down. Yongbae was frowning in worry. Seunghyun looked a little sick, like he was expecting something terrible. 

"Do you remember those documentaries they used to show in high school about the Facilities and the demons inside?"

They all exchanged looks, Yongbae frowning harder. "Yeah. What about them?"

"I was a subject in Facility 78 some years ago now. I'm one of the demons."

Jiyong huffed and rolled his eyes. "Guys, you're supposed to save this kind of stupid prank for April-"

Yongbae's hand locked in a vice grip around the leader's arm, steering Jiyong's gaze from Seungri to Daesung, who's eyes were glowing a brilliant gold, black lines creeping across his face.

"How are you doing that?" Seunghyun whimpered, leaning away from the younger man. 

"I told you, I'm a demon." Daesung sighed and closed his eyes, dropping his head again. 

Yongbae swallowed. "How long?"

"All my life. I was born this way."

Jiyong straightened. "You don't look bloodthirsty to me."

"That would be because I'm not."

"Killed anybody?"

"Only recently."

That didn't make the other three any more comfortable, Seungri stepping in.

"Someone was tracking him and they caught me." The maknae explained. "He killed them to save me."

Jiyong's eyes were flickering, a sure sign of his thinking, "It wa syou that destroyed that Facility on the news, isn't it?"

"It was.That was my old Facility."

"I see." Jiyong folded his hands in his lap. "If that's the case, then thank you."

Daesung raised his head again, eyes and face back to normal. "Pardon?"

"Thank you. For saving Seungri."

Daesung looked like he wanted to crawl ino a hole and die. Seungri's heart ached for the other man, regretting forcing him to do this. "And?"

"And I hope next time you're keeping such a massive secret, you'll haev the balls to tell me instead of making Seungri force you to." Jiyong spat out. 

"You knew?!" The other four members gasped.

"Not for sure." Jiyong appeased. "But I was really intensely interested in the demons when I was younger and I memorized a lot of their patterns and things. Daesung's introversion and distance was a large tip off, not to mention how gravelly his voice sounds and how, despite the doctor saying you shouldn't sing anymore because of your throat, you always seem to maintain the same ability, as if you're fixing the damage you've done over the course of a performance."

Daesung's lips quirked up. "Is your mouth going to be cheap about this?"

"Something like this? No. It's the same as Seungri's gay status. I've known all along, but it's a game changer for everybody. This is serious shit."

Seungri rubbed the back of his neck. "Daesung says we're mates, too."

Yongbae turned on Daesung. "And that means?"

"We're mates." He shrugged. "Partners, lovers, bonded."

The two nodded slowly together, consideringly. Seunghyun shook his head. 

"I'm so sorry, Dae."

The demon cocked his head. "What for, hyung?"

"For what you went through. I can't imagine . . . " He got up from his chair and hugged Daesung, pulling the othe rman tight to his chest and almost shaking. "I'm so sorry."

"It's done. I'm alive, they're not, and I think that's worth more than anything."

Seunghyun gave him a watery smile, hands cupping his face. "More than you can imagine."

* * *

"Who is it you're bringing me to meet again?"

"My grandmother."

"Why?"

"She's the only one who knows I'm gay." Seungri explained. "So I was showing her pictures of you and she thought you looked familiar. Then I showed her some of the shots from  _Fantastic Baby_ , with the blonde hair, and she demanded to meet you."

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yes! Now c',mon. Even if you're uncomfortable, you're still going to get awesome food out of it. Deal for a few hours, would you?"

Daesung sighed, resigned, and followed Seungri inside the house. 

* * *

It had been so many years since he'd laid eyes on her.

Hwayoung was old now, all aged with dropping skin, white hair and frail bones. She wasn't the pitiless nurse who stitched him back together some sixty years ago, though that resistant fire still gleamed in the black of her eyes. She still did her hair in the same military level of severity, dressed in proper fashion with a skirt and blazer. She regarded him with the same standoffish companionism she'd shared in her twenties. 

"How I should have guessed." She barked out, a sharp laugh issuing from her. "I should have known there would be no freedom from you."

He bowed his head, a smirk creeping up his lips. "Haunting, am I?"

"More than that. I only started to think of you recently - blessedly free of your face until my husband died. And then my favourite grandson comes to visit me, tells me he's got a steady man he thinks he loves, and take a guess at who he shows me? Nothing other than your timeless face. I thought that maybe there was a chance it was just some boy who looked too much like you. He started with your pictures from traineehood, walking me through your evolution, told me that you got more and more handsome as the days passed by. And then he shows me that face, that same style in your hair, the same resilence in your eyes. Imagine the nights I spent up, wondering about how you're treating my favourite extended child, wondering how your mind reacted not only to the torture, but the freedom. I watched, I payed attention during the civil war and I knew when the communists pushed past Facility 78. I knew you would run. You were smart like that. I . . . I hoped you would."

He inclined his head. "Have you been happy here? In Seoul, like you said?"

"I have. I have been very happy. I shielded my children from the world's horror, how terrible people are, and they have become good people. And they in turn had their own beautiful children. But it seems I could not shield everybody."

"Then I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"I did not mean for your children to understand our reality."

"Ah. But I should have known. I was drawn to you, likely fate knowing the fruit of my womb would be linked to you indefinitely. But, if there had to be a demon to follow me from there, I could not be more pleased that it is you."

Seungri looked between them. "Wait, waitwaitwait. You  _know_  Daesung?"

"BNF7 0354. I was one of the nurses responsible for keeping him alive after they were finished with him."

"You  _worked_  in Facility 78?"

"I did." Hwayoung glared Seungri into silence. "Seunghyun calls you Daesung. Is that your name?"

"It is now."

"Is that so?" She gave him a crooked grin. "Then welcome to the family, Daesung. Take good care of my grandson or I'll have to kill you."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Hwayoung."

Seungri collapsed down onto the couch. "Wow. What else haven't you told me, Granny?"

"I'm bisexual and I've slept with women before."

Seungri's jaw hit the floor and Hwayoung started cackling.

"Are you serious?!"

"Of course. Why do you think I'm the only person in the family that doesn't mind you getting on your knees to-"

"I GET IT!" Seungri covered his ears. "I've learned so much about you today that I didn't want to know."


End file.
